In the Douglas County School District, where everybody seems to have a strong opinion about vouchers, a survey on the topic, e-mailed to every family, got a lot of people excited about the chance to voice their opinion.

But the survey, asking why parents chose, or didn't, to apply for a private-school voucher, wasn't compiled or funded by the district. And the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs researchers who did compile the survey only needed about 2,000 responses — which meant anyone who tried to respond after that quota was met got shut out, and, in some cases, ticked off.

Lynne Butler is one of those.

"A lot of us were very willing and excited to be able to give our opinions on things," said Butler, who has one child who graduated from Douglas County schools and two currently enrolled. "I didn't think it had to do with an outside group. I thought the district was genuinely interested in our opinions."

Actually it is Dick Carpenter, associate professor in the CU-Colorado Springs education department, who is interested in their opinions.

Carpenter said Douglas County's voucher proposal offered a rare opportunity to learn why parents choose to use a voucher to send their children to private schools. Doug las County's situation is particularly interesting to scholars, he said, because most voucher programs are in urban areas with low-performing schools.

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He said response to the survey, which was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, was surprisingly swift.

Researchers wanted a sampling of parents who chose to apply for vouchers and parents who did not, he said. Because the Douglas County program offered vouchers to 500 families, and there are 60,000 students in the district, they quickly got the responses they needed from non-voucher families.

Last March, the Douglas County school board unanimously approved a pilot program to provide vouchers to 500 students to be used to attend private schools. Several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, sued, claiming the program violated state and federal constitutions. In August, a judge halted the program. The decision is being appealed.

Carpenter confirmed that he had worked with the Institute of Justice in the past. That organization is working with the district on an appeal that would allow the voucher program to move forward.

However, he said the survey is not being done for the institute. "I think they probably will have an interest in it," Carpenter said. "But I don't think it will be used in the legal proceedings at this point."

The survey asks parents which school their child attends, what grade he or she is in and to rate their satisfaction with aspects of the school, including teachers' performance, class size, school safety and "how much students could observe religious traditions."

It also asks parents to rank the importance of various factors that might lead them to choose a private school, such as the school's location, safety, smaller class size, more racial diversity and the availability of religious instruction. The survey also asks parents to indicate their religious affiliation.

The district gets numerous requests to participate in all kinds of research, from surveys to investigations of the effectiveness of various teaching methods, said Syna Morgan, the district's system performance officer.

All those go through a rigorous, and impartial, evaluation, Morgan said. Currently, about 30 studies are going on in or through the district, she said.

This study was approved by the district and it was sent out through the district's e-mail system, which seemed to be a source of confusion for some parents.

And in yet another twist in the voucher saga, after all the uproar, every one of the responses collected may be thrown out.

Morgan said several parents have told her they dishonestly answered "yes" to the first question asking if parents had applied for a voucher, so they could see what the rest of the questions were. If that's true, it could invalidate the responses.

Valid or invalid, the survey has produced one very clear bit of data, Morgan said.

"Parents are hungry to provide feedback. We are in the process of developing that tool," she said.

That parent satisfaction survey is already in the works and should be administered next spring, she said.